The rest of yesterday was miserable. I made no progress toward the cockpit. Most of yesterday was spent chiseling through the red ice. My stomach isn’t holding food anymore.

I’ve been trained for crash site casualties. I have limited emergency aid knowledge. But I don’t think there’s a class or study guide that prepares you for this. It’s embarrassingly crude. With a metal bar from the snow and a rock. Nothing in my world has prepared me for chipping away at the ice and flesh of my crewmate. I had to stop several times to reevaluate my choices. And gag a few times. And clean my face. I learned yesterday that is is cold enough to freeze tears to skin and it’s very uncomfortable.

I stayed up late into the night until I freed her identification tag. It holds every memory she had up until this point. The closest you could get to downloading someone’s brain. The memories even have color codes for how she felt.

I couldn’t resist unlocking and peeking through them until finding her memories of me. They were coded with apprehension at first, annoyance, but then joy. I wish that didn’t make me feel so rotten. Then again it should make me feel rotten, I got her killed. I’ve tucked away the tag into my bag. Now to go on to the next task. I need to get to the cockpit for the other tag. It’s a new day, colder and darker than it was yesterday. But perhaps that’s the mood it should have been from the start.

The cockpit is spread out for miles. I reached the first of it as the star went down again. There’s a closet still standing that I used for shelter for tonight. I’m collecting parts that I can use to build a very basic emergency radio that will signal out to anyone within this system or neighboring ones that we’re here. I’ll get it up and running and double time it to find all my crewmates’ tags. With hope that they are still attached to them. I’m quickly losing hope however.

This morning I went out to find the database and ANIMUS’ base port. I have half a hope that maybe the comms are just damaged and ANIMUS will pop up at his port but most of that hope is being crushed by my experience thus far. I need to head out. The longer I’m here the more I use this journal as less of a log and more for just some equivalent to conversation. I don’t know if it’s working.

I have found the cockpit! Or. The part of the crash that I set out to find. Some of the cockpit is still intact. It’ll have a lot of good machine parts and chips that I can salvage for an emergency signal or luxuries for my shelter. Maybe I can get some kind of heat going. I haven’t taken off this survival suit since the crash and I’m feeling it. A shower might be out of the question but maybe I can get a change of clothing.

I found ANIMUS’ port. For due diligence I tried to power up his port. Nothing.

I have recovered two of my crewmates. I’ve shoved them into my bag for now, the less I think about it the better. At least for now while I’m crashed on this planet. There’s lots of good parts, I’ll have to return to salvage more. With a much bigger bag or even a wagon or sled of some kind. Something I’ll throw together at some point.

I’ve admittedly abandoned yelling for my crew. Trying to breath in this cold is hurting my throat. That and a part of me believes they aren’t going to respond, so why waste my breath?

I’ve hunted around and found the short term data storage. There’s several of them damaged and I will be honest, I’m not sure which one is going to have any information I need. I don’t even know if long term data is going to have any information or if it was all through online collective intelligence. If I get the OCI connection working then I could send a message to central and explain what happened. For now I’ve gathered up a few of the short term data servers, the unbroken ones, and a screen for it.

I could probably throw one together from the wreckage around my shelter, in case the one that I have doesn’t work. Or I could just find another one too, there were a lot of screens all over the ship

It certainly doesn’t feel like I’ve been working all day, but it’s getting hard to see. The shadows aren’t drawing long over the crash. Looking up I can stare directly at the star without my helmet’s light protection kicking in. Is it getting darker?

I don’t think I’ll wait until I return to my shelter to activate these servers. I don’t have to go far as the pilot’s quarters are still mostly standing. I’ll have to override the power diversion that I already set up if there’s even any power to take. Our solar shields probably aren’t charging the ship in any way but still.

*COMMUNICATION DETECTED*

“Graham?”

“Graham, are you messing with the ship’s power systems?”

“Captain, you're still alive?!”

“Graham you lucky son of a”

“Where are you?”

*COMMUNICATION INTERRUPTED*